BBC Concert Orchestra energizes Elgar

You couldn’t help but wonder, especially after uneventful performances of Britten’s “Four Sea Interludes” from “Peter Grimes” and Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E Minor (with soloist Sophie Shao), what was so special about the BBC Concert Orchestra?

It’s a capable ensemble with fine, virtuoso players in the solo positions. But it sounded like any one of a dozen accomplished regional American orchestras during much of its La Jolla Music Society-sponsored concert at Copley Symphony Hall.

Then something happened on the program’s second half.

The orchestra started to stir in Butterworth’s “The Banks of Green Willow,” and it genuinely came alive in a magnificent performance of Elgar’s “Enigma Variations.”

Perhaps the most popular British work in the standard orchestral repertoire, the 1899 “Enigma Variations” just about defines British music. The “Nimrod” movement might as well be the English national anthem in the way it embodies forbearance and dignity, leavened with the slightest bit of melancholy. The ensemble captured both its elegant and elemental aspects in an interpretation marked by majesty and humanity.

While the orchestra kept its distance in a routine Four Sea Interludes, and Shao’s aggressive, even combative, musical temperament threw the cello concerto off kilter, conductor Keith Lockhart had the ensemble absolutely engaged in the variations.

The American-born Lockhart, a conductor who is best known as music director of the Boston Pops, seemed completely at home in front of the British orchestra, which he serves as principal conductor. The BBC Concert Orchestra is one of five BBC ensembles (and one of two based in London). Its trademark is its enterprise and flexibility, which may be why it is such a good fit with the versatile Lockhart.

Lockhart, who conducts without a baton, communicates with his hands. He may start a movement with just a flick of his wrist and have a few unconventional moves, but he’s no podium dancer.

Like Esa-Pekka Salonen, who conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra of London here last year, he’s invested in every measure of the music, although his manner on the podium is looser than Salonen.

Despite (and because of) the ensemble’s obvious familiarity with the variations, the musicians relied on Lockhart to challenge them to make it new. Together, they made it sound both old and new.

Nobody shouted God save the Queen afterward, but if they had, nobody would have blamed them.

La Jolla Music Society Celebrity Orchestra Series

When: Next concert is March 2 with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields